


Agoraphobia/Astraphobia

by Cormack_the_Crow



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anxiety, Astraphobia, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I have absolutely no clue, Panic Attacks, Why did I write this you ask?, mostly just hurt though, no beta Oliver Banks can see tendrils crawling through my skin, tea as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:55:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28818861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cormack_the_Crow/pseuds/Cormack_the_Crow
Summary: Oliver Banks would like to have a nice and normal day for once. It doesn't seem that will be an option, but at least he meets someone along the way.
Relationships: Oliver Banks & Michael "Mike" Crew
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Agoraphobia/Astraphobia

**Author's Note:**

> First time posting to ao3, and as if to throw you off my writing trail it's a genre I essentially never write. I'm a horror writer in almost every other circumstance, but I sometimes use fanfiction as a warmup before moving onto my other projects. I wrote this in 200 word chunks over several days and honestly forgot about it before trying to clean my warmup document. Enjoy!
> 
> Context time!
> 
> This is set in 2010 or so. Oliver has not yet started seeing the tendrils while he's awake, he's still couch surfing, it's a bad time. Mike is still throwing people off of buildings for fun. The general concept is due to the fact that while Mike is not afraid of, say, murdering innocent people or crashing through the stratosphere, we actually don't get any indication he stopped being afraid of storms. Yo I'd be afraid of storms if I'd been hit by lightning, soul chained to an eldritch fear being or not.

Oliver Banks didn’t _enjoy_ couch-surfing, despite how good he’d gotten at it. He could recognize in a moment’s notice when he was about to get kicked out. An uncomfortable smile, a request to sit down and talk. Then some muttering about finances and money being tight and they were so sorry, to which he would fight the hot shame in his face and respond that no, no, _he_ was sorry, and thank you so much all your help. Depending on who it was, the apologies could extend for minutes, but the result was always the same. He would be given a vague timeline (a week or so, a month or so) to determine that he still couldn’t afford an apartment, call one of his remaining friends, shove his clothes back into his suitcase, and start over again.

He was running out of places to go on the summer day that he nearly broke down on the train. It wasn’t his fault, really. He never took the train past his old work, he knew better than that, but he wanted this time to be different. There was a job agency that assured him that he had perfectly good credentials and they would be able to find him a placement in no time. To get to this promised land of job opportunities, though, he needed to go down toward Chelsea. That meant taking the train. And there, on his right, was the skyline he had come to fear.

The dread had begun growing in his stomach long before he could see the Thames. Each chime of a new stop felt like a death knell. _You aren’t going there_ , he assured himself, _you’re just going past_. The train slowed to a stop and gave that cheerful ‘ding-ding!’ Oliver’s knuckles turned yellow, then white around the pole he was gripping as people jostled out to get to jobs, to homes, stores, wherever it was people went when they had lives to get to. More people flowed in to fill the void. One, a man so short his fingers didn’t even brush the grips hanging from the ceiling when he reached for them, eventually took the pole on the other side of Oliver. He wore a coat with a collar so high Oliver was reminded of a dog in a cone. Then the train lurched back to life, and with it the anxiety, such that Oliver forgot all about him.

_You’re going to Chelsea. You aren’t going there_ , he reminded himself as the familiar brick buildings gave way to sparkling glass and metal. Each jolt of the train threatened to throw him to the ground, which suddenly seemed a long way off. He squeezed his eyes shut but could see the tendrils in his mind’s eye, snaking through the buildings, pulsing with something as cold as Oliver’s fingers felt, breaking through skin of the apparitions he knew too well to be real. He sucked in a breath, forced it out, tried again and again to _breathe_ , dammit, just _breathe_ , but the air kept escaping in panting gasps. There had to be some way out of there. 

His eyes shot open to search for something, anything. Some emergency cord, something. Something to get him away from people, why were there so many people? In his search, he saw it through the panoramic windows. The building. A skyscraper piercing the sky like a needle.

The panic surged. His throat felt like it had been sealed in plastic, but a thin whimper squeezed through. He’d had panic attacks every time he’d come by here, but this was worse. This threatened to buckle his knees and leave him curled as small as he could get on the sticky metal floor among used gum and stray wrappers. 

People were staring. They had to be staring. Still, Oliver couldn’t tear his eyes away from the place he’d shattered his own life. He almost didn’t feel it when a hand brushed his. It was only when the man stood on the seat Oliver had left deliberately open that he even noticed him. The short man, the man in the coat, stood in front of the office building. His eyes were a piercing blue. Icy blue. No, electric. A thin sheen of sweat, the natural consequence of wearing a winter coat in July, slicked the purple bags under those eyes. Nausea flowed over Oliver in waves as he stared at the man. Embarrassment, he supposed, though he was too lightheaded from hyperventilating to do anything about it.

The train stopped again, and this time the ringing of the bell snapped him out of the adrenaline-mediated trance. He hung his head to avoid the glare of the passengers. He’d narrowly avoided crying, but that hadn’t made it any less obvious. Heat prickled his cheeks and the tops of his ears. He breathed in like he’d been held underwater until that moment. Slowly, feeling returned to his feet and his mind returned from the stratosphere.

A quiet _thump_ marked the man jumping off the seat. A pale hand reached out to the pole just as the train started again. He didn’t even stumble as he took the spot next to Oliver. Oliver could just make out a roping scar that the coat hid from other angles, but more pressing was the smell. It was hard and sharp, like salt or vinegar. Some form of cologne, perhaps, though not one Oliver would want in his medicine cabinet. The man glanced up and cocked his head for just a second, then turned to watch the sky outside the window.

By the time the automated voice announced his stop, Oliver’s main concern was avoiding all eye contact. The doors opened with a mechanical wheeze. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and filed out. The air of the station was stale and smelled of a mix of ammonia and lemon cleaner, but he’d be out of it soon enough. He pulled out his phone and found the address in his notes. Just a couple of blocks, then he could go to his appointment and try to forget the whole thing.

#

He did not forget the whole thing. Apparently the panic attack had been less a fluke than an omen. There had been a scheduling error. Could he wait half an hour? He didn’t think he had much of a choice, so he sat in a chair that felt deliberately underpadded and tried to will his stomach into settling. It hadn’t worked. It hadn’t worked so well, in fact, that he ended up in a spluttering coughing fit when bile burned the back of his throat. When he did finally meet the woman who was supposed to help him find a position, she scrutinized the spit-flecked elbow of his button-up before interrogating him about whether he was stable enough to work. Was he on medication? Was he in therapy? How did she know there wouldn’t be a repeat of, ahem, ‘your unfortunate situation’? He didn’t have satisfactory answers for any of it.

Getting back to Cheri’s apartment had been complicated by missing the stop not once, but three times. By the time he got there, he wanted nothing more than to hide under the hand-me-down quilt. One more week. He had a follow-up appointment the next day. The woman at the placement agency had requested he remember to print out his resume this time.

He left early the next morning, waving goodbye to Cheri as she poured her first cup of coffee. The dreams had brought him through a suburb where the tendrils climbed the walls like ivy. Best not to ask what would happen. He would see it on the news soon enough.

He arrived at the library soon after it opened. The librarians knew him well enough to hand him the passcode to the computers without asking for his card. 

He’d pulled up his resume and was fussing with the format when something changed in the air. It was subtle, like the building had suddenly gained a couple hundred meters’ altitude. He looked around for the source, though he wasn’t sure what he expected to see.

What he didn’t expect to see was a familiar gray coat, the collar now smoothed down to show a fractal scar down the man’s neck. If he stared, he felt it was justified for his confusion. Was the man following him? No, that didn’t make sense. This was a coincidence. It had to be a coincidence, because he didn’t like any other explanation. 

The man pulled a book off the for-sale rack, turned it over in his hands, and tucked it under his arm. He was fishing for change in his pocket when he caught Oliver’s eye. Oliver froze. They stared each other down for a moment before the man blinked and, to Oliver’s horror, walked forward. 

None of the thousand scenarios Oliver envisioned in the time it took the man to reach his side ended well. He’d be told off, first of all. Possibly threatened with police action. The entire library would know that he’d nearly had a breakdown yesterday. If this day could go any worse than the one before, he was about to find out.

The man stuck out his hand. “Mike,” he said by way of greeting. 

“Er.” Reluctantly, as if the man might shock him when their skin touched, he took his hand and gave it a limp shake. There was none of the electricity that he expected, though his skin was ice cold. “Oliver. Sorry about that.”

Mike shrugged. He looked over at Oliver’s resume and read through the internships that made up most of the sparse document. He was so close you could smell that sharp burn, then so close the hanging bottom of the sleeve settled on Oliver’s shoulder. Oliver was glad his skin was dark enough not to show the blood rushing to his cheeks. “That’s personal—” he started.

“That your number?” Mike asked, unfazed. He tapped the corner of the screen. 

“Yes, could you please not look at it?” Oliver hissed, checking to make sure no one was looking over at the two of them.

“Wouldn’t go anywhere.”

“What do you mean?” he demanded right before figuring out what Mike meant. Ten digits lined up under one pale finger. Silently, Oliver added the sixth digit of his phone number. The lack of callbacks made more sense. How long had he missed that? He’d completely reworked the thing a couple of months after leaving his last job. Had it been like that the whole time? “Uh. Thanks.”

Mike shrugged again. He sat in the office chair at the next terminal and began to spin in slow, thoughtful circles. Oliver frowned, but couldn’t figure out what else he was supposed to say. He read over his contact information no fewer than three times, glanced over the unchanged work experience and skills, and set it to print. He found 10p at the bottom of his jacket pocket, fed it into the printer, and grabbed the thin sheet. 

When he returned, he was surprised to find Mike still there, his fingers gripping the edge of the rough upholstery of the swivel chair as he swayed in a nonexistent breeze. “Give yourself vertigo?” Oliver asked. The corner of his lip quirked into a smile, and he was forced to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from looking like he was laughing at the man. Mike had to be older than him by a few years, though he couldn’t gauge by how many. Too old to be making himself dizzy on an office chair, but certainly too old to be mocked for it.

Once he settled enough to do so, Mike nodded. “Can’t do it to myself. Train?”

“Train?” Oliver repeated. He glanced out the window and felt silly for it. A realization sent butterflies fluttering in his stomach. “Oh, you mean yesterday? Er, thank you. For that.” What was the proper way of telling someone you were grateful that they had been the five feet between you and a breakdown on a public train?

“No, today. Going somewhere?” Mike pointed to the paper.

“Yeah.”

And that was how he ended up on the train with Mike again. Apparently, he’d been planning to go to Chelsea anyways, something about the architecture. Oliver had asked if he was an architect, hoping to wheedle out a conversation instead of just having a smaller, significantly paler, shadow. Mike shook his head but said nothing more. Better not to press, Oliver decided.

Things went wrong immediately, because that was just the sort of life Oliver lived. The train was packed. Each seat was filled, then each pole surrounded by a throng of people desperately trying and failing not to touch each other. Each hanging loop was taken. Oliver found himself standing in the middle of the path and apologizing to everyone who had to squeeze past him on their way to discovering that there was no space over there, either. Each awkward brush of shoulders or worse, of hands, sent a jolt from the touched spot. He swallowed and tried to press further into himself. 

That could have worked if the woman hadn’t come on. She was unremarkable, really. Brown hair tied back into a low ponytail, t-shirt emblazoned with a reference so obscure it wasn’t meant to be understood, headphones on. Seeing her felt like being thrown in an icy lake. She’d been in his dream not three days ago, neck snapped at the bottom of a flight of stairs, purple-red veins spilling from a hole in her back. His mouth went dry as cotton.

_We’re not even near Chelsea_ , was the last thought Oliver could remember before the static of panic overtook him. It got blurry from there, a haze of pressing bodies and a cold hand on his, then blue, blue, endless blue, and suddenly he was back on the ground next to a wirework table that shifted when he put his hand down to steady himself. Still dazed, he collapsed into the white metal chair. It squealed against the concrete, but the sound was far, far away. 

The clink of ceramic against metal didn’t get him out of his mind, but did at least remind him that he wasn’t where he had started. “Did we get off?” he asked Mike, and cringed at how weak his voice sounded. 

Mike continued laying out tea: a bowl of sugar, pitcher of cream, and a pot with two tea bags sticking out the side. A platter of lady fingers and shortbread with clotted cream sat to the side. He filled Oliver’s cup before pouring his own and taking the opposite chair. “Yep.” He swirled a spoonful of sugar and splash of milk into the steaming mug.

“Where are we?” Oliver pressed. Had he blacked out? No, that wasn’t right. There had been the blue. Unless perhaps that was still a blackout? He’d never been drunk enough to find this kind of thing out. He’d certainly never blacked out during a panic attack, and he’d had enough of those to know. But the cold porcelain certainly felt real, as did the citrusy tang of bergamot. When he stirred the milk into the tea they formed a tiny whirlpool just as real tea and milk would. It tasted like something he couldn’t afford. Still, he had been on a train just a moment before. 

“Shop in Chiswick. There were too many people on the train.” Mike pushed the plate of biscuits over.

Oliver squinted into his cup. Chiswick? No, they weren’t going to Chiswick. They were going to Chelsea. How did they end up here? Were they on the wrong train? The tea didn’t answer. At this point it still seemed like a better source than Mike. 

Through the window, a clock on the café wall told him it was just past one. No, that couldn’t be right, either. They’d gotten on the train at one. Oliver took a sip and wondered if he’d finally snapped. People bustled by, evidently unaware of the discrepancies in time and space. He wondered if he could get to his appointment at three. He wondered if three was a time that still existed.

The clock moved on to 1:15, then 1:30, then 1:45. At some point it would reach three, he reasoned. At two they really ought to get going. It would be terrible form to be late to a job placement interview. He had just opened his mouth to say this when his phone rang, so instead he yelped, “Sorry, sorry!” as Mike closed his book and looked around for the source.

“Good afternoon! Is this Oliver Banks?” the woman on the other end asked.

It was, which was unfortunate, because Oliver Banks’s appointment had to be canceled. So sorry, but Ms. Castillo had had to go home sick and there was no one else available. Would tomorrow work? Four o’clock? Alright, see you then! Again, so sorry, have a lovely day.

Oliver sighed as he slid his phone back in his pocket. A cold raindrop soaked through his hair and dribbled down his scalp. The sky had turned gunmetal gray. Black clouds crowded the horizon. “Just my luck,” he muttered. A storm was rolling in, he could smell it in the vinegary burn of ozone. _That’s it_ , Oliver thought. _That’s what Mike’s cologne smells like_. What kind of company would sell the smell of a storm?

Mike shoved the book back into his pocket. “Would you like to come over to my place?” He asked, his voice for the first time rising out of deadpan and into panic. “I live just around the corner.” As if to demonstrate, he gestured down the street. Something wild came alive in his blue eyes, but it was not the forced smile on his lips.

Several thoughts came to Oliver at the same time. First was that this was the strangest way a man had ever asked him out. Second was that this was some ploy that would end with him dead. Third was the branching scar that climbed up Mike’s neck and plunged into his shirt, keloid twigs reaching up his jaw and over his collarbone. A lightning scar, he realized.

The clouds growled in reply. Mike swallowed, his wide eyes still firmly on Oliver. His chest heaved.

Oliver steeled his nerves and replied before he could fall back to the second thought. “Sure. Lead the way.” Not like he had anywhere to be. 

Despite Mike being a solid foot shorter than him, Oliver struggled to keep up as they rounded the block to a clean white apartment building. People put up umbrellas as the rain went from stray drops to sheets. Mike grabbed his hand and tugged him into the building. 

They didn’t speak in the clean white lobby, nor the mirrored elevator, nor the art-lined hallway. Neither of them said a word until Mike shoved a key into the lock of a penthouse apartment, scratching the metal around it in the process, and ducked inside. In a single motion, he unlocked the window and flung it open. Thunder clapped. Mike winced. “That’s real, right? Out there? The storm?” he demanded.

“It’s real,” Oliver agreed. The word ‘psychosis’ came to mind, but he wasn’t exactly in a place to judge others’ mental health. Even if it was psychosis, the best he could do was help him through this. Oliver took a moment to marvel at how calm he was. Perhaps all he needed was someone else’s panic to overcome his own.

Mike sighed in what sounded like relief, though his shoulders remained tense. He rubbed his eyes. “Okay. Okay. You can sit down, you know.” 

There was absolutely nothing about this situation that would make him feel less comfortable with sitting on a near stranger’s couch. He tended to hover even in close friends’ houses, waiting until they assured him several times before he sat at the very edge of a chair. Here, he didn’t even know the layout. There was no hallway, just a single door he assumed was the bathroom. The kitchen was closest to them, and just past that was a couch and a twin bed. Nothing quite like a studio apartment to increase the dread of being in someone else’s space. 

Stalling, though, he knew how to do. “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?” It was his stock response. There wasn’t much he could get here, and if he wasn’t willing to take the couch there was no chance he’d be okay rifling through the guy’s medicine cabinet. Still, it made him feel better to ask.

A flash of lightning illuminated the apartment and answered for him. Mike froze for a moment of wide-eyed terror, then began backing away from the still-open window like it might swallow him whole. Thunder followed a few seconds after. A mix of a laugh and a sob escaped the back of Mike’s throat. 

Well, that was something he could do. Oliver went up to the window and slid it closed. Thunder rolled again, but it was muffled by the glass. In another time it may have even been relaxing, but Mike continued to stare at the roiling clouds. “How about we get you _away_ from the window?” Oliver suggested. When Mike didn’t respond, Oliver put a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon.”

Carefully, for fear that the smaller man would snap out of his trance and yell at him for doing so, Oliver guided Mike to the couch. It faced a flatscreen television, though flickers of lightning from the windows were reflected in the black. Numbly, Mike took a spot on the gray sofa and tucked into the corner. When a lightning strike lit up the blank screen, he nestled his face in his hands.

Comforting people was not one of Oliver’s strong suits. His parents were kind and loving, but their main advice for fears growing up was “that’s not scary”, followed by an explanation of something that was scary, which did take his mind off the first thing, but generally not as they hoped. After that was “take a nap”. While storms weren’t scary to him, he did not feel comfortable telling someone who had been struck by lightning not to be afraid of the thing that was likely the worst experience of his life. “Take a nap”, meanwhile, had become significantly less effective when his terrors started snaking though his dreams. He sighed and took the spot next to the folded-up man. “Can I get you anything?” Oliver repeated, more for himself than for Mike.

Mike shivered.

It wasn’t an answer, but it was a hint. Trying not to feel like a creep, Oliver grabbed a neatly folded blanket from a shelf at the foot of the bed. “Blanket?” he offered. He put it to Mike’s side when Mike didn’t acknowledge it. After a moment, Mike grabbed the corner and wrapped it around himself. 

Oliver reviewed what little he knew about the man. He liked to read. He liked architecture, or at least skyscrapers. When Oliver had panicked, he’d put himself in the way of the problem, and later removed them from the problem. Neither would work here. Oliver could neither control the weather nor block it from view. 

What he could do, though, was distract him. It had already been a weird day, he decided. May as well make it weirder. “So, uh, I don’t know if this helps at all, but…” He didn’t know where he was going with this. He didn’t even talk to people when he could help it. Stall, stall, he needed to stall. “Do you want to hear a story?” 

There was no plan behind the offer. He didn’t know that many stories. He didn’t really read for fun, so summarizing a book on the fly was a no-go. But then Mike peered out from under the blue throw blanket, making eye contact for the first time since the storm had started. He said nothing, but Oliver took that thread of interest and held it tight.

“Well, I don’t think we were ever properly introduced, though I guess you read my resume.” This was a bad start. He would not get a better one. “My name is Oliver Banks. I used to work at a financial firm, but that, well, that fell apart. That’s why I had a panic attack on the train. I used to work in that building.” He could see Mike’s attention stray to the shifting gray clouds reflected on the television. “And then I started dreaming people’s deaths.”

That got his attention. Mike watched him with wide eyes as Oliver explained the dreams, the tendrils, seeing his own father’s death. It felt like someone had shoved a tap in his chest and the words were spilling out. He forced down tears as he described the things he’d long ago given up on understanding. Most of his friends didn’t even know about the dreams, and those that did just offered weak apologies for the stress he was under and quick changes of the subject. He had no reason to think a near stranger would be different, but at least he didn’t have to worry about ruining a relationship. “I think that’s it,” he choked after explaining why he’d panicked on the train that afternoon. “Yeah. Sorry, I know you already probably thought I was crazy.”

Mike hadn’t spoken since asking about the storm, but he cracked a wan smile now. “I sold my soul to a book so a storm monster would stop chasing me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Do you mind…?” He reached out a hand, though it wasn’t clear to what.

“Sure,” Oliver replied, though given the man had just confessed to not having a soul he perhaps should have thought it through a bit longer. If he got his immortal soul destroyed for this, well, that was just how the day was going. 

Faster than Oliver could process, Mike wrapped him in a hug, his strength surprising for someone his size. He rested his chin on Oliver’s shoulder and breathed out slowly, deeply. Frizzy blonde hair tickled Oliver’s cheek. “Thank you,” he murmured. 

“For what?” Oliver asked.

“For being human.”


End file.
